María Salazar-Ferro

María Salazar-Ferro is CPJ’s Impunity Campaign and Journalist Assistance Program coordinator. A native of Bogotá, she studied at Universidad de los Andes, in Bogotá, and graduated from the University of Virginia. She reports on exiled and missing journalists, and has represented CPJ on missions to Mexico and the Philippines, among others.

In the aftermath of this week's foreign policy speech
by President Barack Obama and discussions on the imminent pullout of U.S.
troops from Afghanistan, we need to think once again of the implications this
retreat will have for the thousands of Afghans who for more than a decade have
worked not only with the military, but also with U.S.-based non-governmental
and media organizations.

Almost half of the 67 journalists killed worldwide in 2012 were
targeted and murdered for their work, research
by the Committee to Protect Journalists shows. The vast majority covered
politics. Many also reported on war, human rights, and crime. In almost half of
these cases, political groups are the suspected source of fire. There has been
no justice in a single one of these deaths.

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In 1950, the United Nations General Assembly declared
December 10 Human Rights Day in commemoration of the adoption and proclamation two
years earlier of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights. Every year, on this day, the U.N. chooses one right
to highlight and advocate. This year, Human Rights Day is focused on the right
of all people to make their voices heard. This is not possible when journalists
worldwide are being murdered.

The tortured
and decapitated body of 39-year-old María
Elizabeth Macías Castro was found on a Saturday evening in September
2011. It had been dumped by the side of a road in Nuevo Laredo, a Mexican
border town ravaged by the war on drugs. Macías, a freelance journalist, wrote
about organized crime on social media under the pseudonym "The Girl from Laredo." Her murder, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, was the first in which a journalist was killed in direct
relation for reporting published on social media. It remains unsolved.

Three years ago, on November 23, 2009, 30 journalists and two
media workers were brutally
killed in the southern Philippine city of Maguindanao while travelling in a
convoy with the family and supporters of a local politician. To this day, not a
single suspect has been convicted, though local authorities have identified
close to 200. The botched trial
has been stalled with procedural hurdles. Victims' families have been
threatened and key witnesses have been slain.

Approximately 30 journalists are targeted and murdered every
year, and on average, in only three of these crimes are the killers ever brought
to justice. Other attacks on
freedom of expression occur daily: bloggers are threatened, photographers
beaten, writers kidnapped. And in those instances, justice is even more rare.
Today, the Committee to Protect Journalists joins freedom of expression
advocates worldwide in a 23-day campaign
to dismantle one case at a time a culture of impunity
that allows perpetrators to gag journalists, bloggers, photographers and
writers, while keeping the rest of us uninformed.

CPJ's
Journalist Assistance Program supports journalists who cannot be helped by
advocacy alone. In 2011, we assisted 171 journalists worldwide. Almost
a fourth came from countries that made CPJ's Most Censored list. Eight journalists from Eritrea,
five from Syria, six from Cuba, and a whopping 20 from Iran sought our help
after being forced to leave their countries, having suffered the consequences
of defying censorship at home.

In 2010, following midsummer negotiations between the
Catholic Church and the government of President Raúl Castro, Cuban authorities
began releasing imprisoned journalists, sending them into forced exile with their
families. In April 2011, the last of more than 20 journalists arrived in Spain.
They had been granted liberty and respite, and were promised support from
Spanish authorities while they settled into the new country. But almost two
years after the first crop of journalists arrived in Spain, the four who remain
in the country are living under extremely difficult
conditions, struggling even to feed themselves.

On Wednesday morning, exiled Cuban journalist Albert
Santiago Du Bouchet Hernández took his own life, according to reports in the Cuban
exiled media. He was the last
of more than 20 Cuban journalists to be released from prison and sent to Spain
following July 2010 talks between the government of Cuban President Raúl Castro
and the Catholic Church. Du Bouchet Hernández, who reported opposition
political news, endured inhumanity at home and, ultimately, suffered hardship
in exile.

Veteran Somali radio journalist Hassan Mohamed, 45, died early
yesterday morning in Eastleigh, a Nairobi suburb. He had fled Mogadishu in
2010, having been threatened, kidnapped, and shot twice. One of hundreds of
Somali refugees in Kenya, many of them journalists, Hassan struggled to support
himself and survive worsening diabetes-related ailments, despite relentless
support from Somali colleagues and friends, including CPJ. His death highlights
the plight of exiled journalists in East Africa.